1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the technology of printers applicable to networks. More particularly, this invention relates to the technology of printers capable of direct printing without fetching information resources existing at a certain node on a network and sending them into computers.
2. Description of the Related Art
A computer network system is composed of a network and many nodes interconnected through the network. Nodes mean, for example, computers, printers, and other equipment. Nodes connected to a network exchange information with each other by utilizing various communication services.
For example, with a system including a printer connected to a network such as LAN (Local Area Network), a computer sends a print request through the network to the printer and the printer performs printing on the basis of the print request.
With a WWW (World Wide Web) system, a client computer accesses server computers, that is, Web servers or Web sites in accordance with a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) and acquires information resources such as Web pages. The client computer then displays the acquired information resource through a browser.
With the prior art, when a user attempts to print information resources existing at a certain node on a network, the user accesses the node from a computer to download the information resources and then sends a print request from the computer to the printer based on the information resources. In other words, the user cannot make the printer directly fetch the information resources existing at the node to enable printing. Moreover, since the information resources to be printed is sent from the node to the computer and then from the computer to the printer, heavier load than necessary is applied to the network.